Chapter V

The reason that Men do not doubt of many things, is, that they never
examine common Impressions; they do not dig to the Root, where the
Faults and Defects lye; they only debate upon the Branches: They do
not examine whether such and such a thing be true, but if it has
been so and so understood. It is not inquir’d into, whether _Galen_
has said anything to purpose, but whether he has said so or
so.—MONTAIGNE.

WILLOUGHBY’S ESSAY—THIRD EVENING.

§ 3. _Theophrastus Paracelsus._

Due place must be given to the influence of that medical Ishmael,
Paracelsus. Born in 1493 at Einsiedeln, near Zurich, he studied
medicine at Basle, and travelled Europe for fourteen years from
Sweden to Naples, and from France to Poland. The jealous hatred
awakened by a most reasonable project of reform drove him from Basle
soon after his return. Vituperated and vituperating, he became a
wanderer throughout Germany, everywhere forming, or followed by,
successive groups of disciples. He died at the age of forty-eight,
in a little inn—but not, as report has long said, drunk on the
taproom floor;—a victim, more probably, to the violence of
assailants despatched against him by some hostile physicians.[215]

Paracelsus found the medical profession of those days more
disastrously incompetent, if possible, than we see it in the pages
of Le Sage and Molière. It was so easy of entrance, he complains, as
to become the tempting resource of knavery and ignorance everywhere.
With a smattering of Greek a doctor might be finished and famous. A
dead language was to exorcise deadly maladies. Diseases were
encountered by definitions, and fact and experiment unheeded amidst
disputes about the sense of Galen, Hippocrates, and Avicenna. When a
new life began to struggle to the light from beneath the ruins of
scholasticism, the fearless vehemence of such a nature became its
appropriate organ. Paracelsus was the first to lecture in the
vernacular. Instead of reading and commenting on the text of Galen,
or extracting fanciful specifics from Raymond Lully, or John de
Rupecissa, he resolved to observe and judge for himself wherever the
ravages of disease or war might furnish him with facts. Preposterous
as many of his own remedies may have been, he merits the title of a
reformer in effect as well as purpose. He applied, with great
success, mineral preparations before unknown, or little used;
performed celebrated cures by the use of opium, and exposed the
fraudulent pretensions of the alchemist and the astrologer. To the
persecution and gross abuse of the profession he replied in torrents
of undiluted and inexhaustible Billingsgate. While his
velvet-cloaked brethren, with faces blandly inane or portentously
inscrutable, mounted, with step of cat-like softness, to the chamber
of the obese burgomaster or the fashionable lady, Paracelsus gloried
in grandiloquent shabbiness and boisterous vulgarity. He boasted
that he had picked up many a hint while chatting as an equal with
pedlars, waggoners, and old women. He loved to drain his can on the
ale-bench before wayside hostelries with boors such as Ostade has
painted. Ragged and dusty, footing it with his knapsack on his back
under a broiling sun, he would swear that there lay more wisdom in
his beard than in all the be-doctored wiseacres of all the
universities of Europe.

On the basis of principles substantially the same with those
represented by Agrippa, Paracelsus developed, in his own way, the
doctrine of signatures, and the relationships of the macrocosm and
the microcosm.

The special illumination of the Holy Ghost was not more essential to
the monastic perfection of preceding mystics, than to the success of
the theosophist in that devout pursuit of science inculcated by
Paracelsus. The true Physician—he who would be wise indeed in the
mysteries of nature, must seek with ceaseless importunity the light
that cometh from above. In the Scriptures, and in the Cabbala, lies
the key to all knowledge. Medicine has four pillars: (1)
_Philosophy_, generally equivalent, as he uses it, to
physiology,—the study of the true nature of material substances in
their relation to the microcosm, man; (2) _Astronomy_, embracing
especially the influences of the heavenly bodies on the human frame;
(3) _Alchemy_, not gold-making, but the preparation of
specifics—chemistry applied to medicine; (4) _Religion_, whereby the
genuine professor of the healing art is taught of God, and works in
reliance on, and union with, Him.[216] In the spirit of the ancient
mystics he describes the exaltation of one whose soul is inwardly
absorbed, so that the ordinary operation of the external senses is
suspended. A man thus divinely intoxicated, lost in thoughts so
profound, may seem, says Paracelsus, a mere fool to the men of this
world, but in the eyes of God he is the wisest of mankind, a
partaker of the secrecy of the Most High.[217] Like Agrippa (and
with as good reason) Paracelsus lays great stress on Imagination,
using the term, apparently, to express the highest realization of
faith. Bacon observes that Imagination is with Paracelsus almost
equivalent to Fascination. He speaks of the Trinity as imaged in
man, in the Heart, (_Gemüth_), in Faith, and in Imagination,—the
three forms of that spiritual nature in us which he declares a fiery
particle from the Divine Substance. By the disposition of the Heart
we come to God; by Faith to Christ; and by Imagination we receive
the Holy Spirit. Thus blessed (did we but truly know our own hearts)
nothing would be impossible to us. This is the true magic, the gift
of Faith, which, were its strength sufficient, might even now cast
out devils, heal the sick, raise the dead, and remove
mountains.[218]

In the sixteenth century we still trace the influence of that
doctrine, so fertile in mysticism, which Anselm bequeathed to the
schoolmen of the middle age. We are to know by ascending to the
fount of being, and in the primal Idea, whence all ideas flow, to
discern the inner potency of all actual existence. But in
Paracelsus we see especial prominence given to two new ideas which
greatly modify, and apparently facilitate the researches of
theosophy. One of these is the theory of divine manifestation by
_Contraries_,—teaching (instead of the old division of Being and
Non-being) the development of the primal ground of existence by
antithesis, and akin, in fact, to the principle of modern
speculative philosophy, according to which the Divine Being is the
absorption (_Aufhebung_) of those contraries which his
self-evolution, or _lusus amoris_, has posited. This doctrine is
the key-note in the system of Jacob Behmen. The other is the
assumption that man—the micro-cosm, is, as it were, a miniature of
the macro-cosm—the great outer world,—a little parliament to which
every part of the universe sends its deputy,—his body a compound
from the four circles of material existence,—his animal nature
correspondent to, and dependent on, the upper firmament,—and his
spirit, a divine efflux wherein, though fallen, there dwells a
magnetic tendency towards its source, which renders redemption
possible through Christ. There is nothing, accordingly, in the
heavens above, or in the earth beneath, which may not be found in
the minor world of man. On this principle, further, depends the
whole system of signatures in its application to the cure of human
malady.[219]

Paracelsus defines true magic as the knowledge of the hidden virtues
and operations of natural objects. The Cabbala imparts instruction
concerning heavenly mysteries, and teaches the loftiest
approximation to the Supreme. By the combination of these sources of
knowledge we come to understand, and can partially produce, that
marriage between heavenly influences and terrestrial objects,
called, in the language of theosophy, Gamahea.[220] True magic is
founded solely ‘on the Ternary and Trinity of God,’ and works in
harmony with that universal life which, under the influence of the
Holy Spirit, animates all nature,—even the granite, the ocean, and
the flower. The magic of Paracelsus disclaims the use of all
ceremonies, conjurations, bannings, and blessings, and will rest
solely on the power of that faith to which the promise was given,
that spirits should be subject to it, and mountains plucked up at
its fiat.[221] We are here far enough from the theurgic ritual of
Iamblichus. But large room still remained for superstitious
practice, and Paracelsus could not refuse his faith to the potency
of certain magical words, of waxen images, and of pentacula
inscribed with magic characters. The universal life of nature was
mythologically personified in the sylphs and gnomes, the salamanders
and undines, somewhat as the thought of supernatural presence found
its representation in the nymphs, the nereids, and the hamadryads,
of ancient Grecian fable.[222]

In the chemistry of Paracelsus all matter is composed, in varying
proportions, of salt—the firm coherent principle, of quicksilver—the
fluid, and of sulphur—the fiery, or combustible.[223]

The theory of signatures proceeded on the supposition that every
creature bears, in some part of its structure or outward
conformation, the indication of the character or virtue inherent in
it—the representation, in fact, of its idea or soul. Southey
relates, in his _Doctor_, a legend, according to which he who should
drink the blood of a certain unknown animal would be enabled to hear
the voice and understand the speech of plants. Such a man might
stand on a mountain at sunrise, and hearken to their language, from
the delicate voices of wild flowers and grass blades in the dew, to
the large utterance of the stately trees making their obeisance in
the fresh morning airs;—might hear each enumerating its gifts and
virtues, and blessing the Creator for his bestowments. The knowledge
thus imparted by a charm, the student of sympathies sought as the
result of careful observation. He essayed to read the character of
plants by signs in their organization, as the professor of palmistry
announced that of men by the lines of the hand. Such indications
were sometimes traced from the resemblance of certain parts of a
plant to portions of the human frame, sometimes they were sought in
the more recondite relations of certain plants to certain stars.
Thus citrons, according to Paracelsus, are good for heart affections
because they are heart-shaped; and because, moreover, they have the
colour of the sun, and the heart is, in a sort, the sun of the body.
Similarly, the _saphena riparum_ is to be applied to fresh wounds,
because its leaves are spotted as with flecks of blood. A species of
_dentaria_, whose roots resemble teeth, is a cure for toothache and
scurvy.[224]

The theosophists, working on principles very similar to those of the
alchemists, though with worthier and larger purpose, inherited the
extraordinary language of their predecessors. That wisdom of
Gamahea, which was to explain and facilitate the union of the
celestial and terrestrial in the phenomena and processes of nature,
naturally produced a phraseology which was a confused mixture of
theological, astrological, and chemical terms. To add to the
obscurity, every agent or process was veiled under symbolic names
and fantastic metaphors, frequently changing with the caprice of the
adept. Thus the white wine of Lully is called by Paracelsus the glue
of the eagle; and Lully’s red wine is, with Paracelsus, the blood of
the Red Lion. Often the metaphor runs into a kind of parable, as
with Bernard of Treviso. He describes what is understood to be the
solution of gold in quicksilver, under the regimen of Saturn,
leaving a residuum of black paste, in the following oriental style:—

‘The king, when he comes to the fountain, leaving all strangers
behind him, enters the bath alone, clothed in golden robes, which he
puts off, and gives to Saturn, his first chamberlain, from whom he
receiveth a black velvet suit.’[225]

In like manner, in the _Secretum Magicum_ attributed (to
Paracelsus), we find mention of the chemical Virgin Mary, of
chemical deaths and resurrections, falls and redemptions, adopted
from theological phraseology. We read of the union of the
philosophic Sol,—Quintessentia Solis, or Fifth Wisdom of Gold, with
his Father in the Golden Heaven, whereby imperfect substances are
brought to the perfection of the Kingdom of Gold.[226]

The conclusion of Weidenfeld’s treatise on the Green Lion of
Paracelsus may suffice as a specimen of this fanciful mode of
expression, which can never speak directly, and which, adopted by
Jacob Behmen, enwraps his obscure system in sevenfold darkness:—

‘Let us therefore desist from further pursuit of the said Green Lion
which we have pursued through the meads and forest of Diana, through
the way of philosophical Saturn, even to the vineyards of
Philosophy. This most pleasant place is allowed the disciples of
this art to recreate themselves here, after so much pains and sweat,
dangers of fortune and life, exercising the work of women and the
sports of children, being content with the most red blood of the
Lion, and eating the white or red grapes of Diana, the wine of which
being purified, is the most secret secret of all the more secret
Chymy; as being the white or red wine of Lully, the nectar of the
ancients, and their only desire, the peculiar refreshment of the
adopted sons, but the heart-breaking and stumblingblock of the
scornful and ignorant.’[227]

Footnote 215:

See Lessing’s _Paracelsus_, p. 18.

Footnote 216:

Lessing’s _Paracelsus_, § 26.

Footnote 217:

Language to this effect is cited among the copious extracts given by
Godfrey Arnold, _Unpartheyische Kirchen- und Ketzer-Historie_, Th. ii.
p. 309.

Footnote 218:

_De Occulta Philosophia, Prologus_, p. 30, and p. 58. This is one of
the three treatises edited by Gerard Dorn, and published together in a
small volume, Basle, 1584. Comp. also Arnold, Th. iv. p. 145.

Footnote 219:

Dorn’s _Dictionarium Paracelsi_ (Frankfort, 1583), Art. Microcosmus.
Also the _Secretum Magicum_ of Paracelsus, entire in Arnold, p. 150.
The implanted image of the Trinity, and the innate tendency in man
toward his Divine Origin, are familiar to us as favourite doctrines
with the mystics of the fourteenth century.

Footnote 220:

_De Occ. Phil._ cap. iv. p. 45, and cap. xi. p. 78. Also, _Dict.
Paracels._ Art. Magia. Talis influentiarum cœlestium conjunctio vel
impressio qua operantur in inferiora corpora cœlestes vires, _Gamahea_
Magis, vel matrimonium virium et proprietatum cœlestium cum
elementaribus corporibus, dicta fuit olim.—Paracelsi _Aurora
Philosophorum_, cap. iv. p. 24 (ed. Dorn).

Footnote 221:

_Aurora Phil._ loc. cit.; _De Occ. Phil._ i. ii.; and xi. p. 79.

Footnote 222:

See _De Occ. Phil._ cap. v. Magical powers are ascribed to images, p.
85. A collection of talismanic figures is appended to the treatise. In
the _Thesaurus Philosophorum_ is to be found (p. 145) the arcanum of
the Homunculus and the Universal Tincture. The Homunculus is said to
be a mannikin, constructed by magic, receiving his life and substance
from an artificial principle, and able to communicate to his
fabricator all manner of secrets and mysteries of science.

Footnote 223:

The three continents—Europe, Asia, and Africa—were said to represent
these three constituent principles respectively; the stars contain
them, as in so many vials; the Penates (a race of sapient but mortal
spirits) employ them for the manufacture of thunder.

Footnote 224:

Lessing’s _Paracelsus_, § 58. This fanciful kind of physiognomy
displaces theurgy, among these inquirers. It led, at least, to much
accurate observation. It was a sign of health when the chafing-dish
and conjuring-book were forsaken for the woods and fields. Cardan, who
repudiates the charge of having ever employed incantations or sought
intercourse with dæmons, endeavours to establish chiromancy on what
were then called astronomical principles. Thus, Mars rules the thumb,
wherein lies strength; Jupiter, the forefinger, whence come auguries
of fame and honour, &c.

Footnote 225:

See _Lives of the Alchemistical Philosophers_. This book contains a
collection of the most celebrated treatises on the theory and practice
of the Hermetic Art. The passage from Bernard is in _The Book of
Eirenæus Philalethes_, p. 166.

Footnote 226:

Thus, Cardan declared that the law of Moses was from Saturn; that of
Christ, from Jupiter and Mercury. Over that of Mahomet presided, in
conjunction, Sol and Mars; while Mars and the Moon ruled idolatry. It
was thought no impiety—only a legitimate explanation, to attribute the
supernatural wisdom and works of our Lord to the divinely-ordained
influences of the planetary system.

Footnote 227:

This passage is from the Annotations of Weidenfeld on the _Green Lion_
of Paracelsus; _Lives of the Alchem. Phil._ p. 201. The _Thesaurus
Thesaurorum_ contains another choice specimen of the same sort, p.
124.